ResourcesOn this page you will find some featured activist resources including books, quotes, videos, stickers, and links to activist organizations. For greater effectiveness, pick an organization that appeals to you and join (or establish) a local group to help advance the mission of that organization in your community. Please let us know of any other resources that should be featured on this page. |
Some categories represented below are addressed by a specialized resource group at Resources for Life.
"The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?'" - Jeremy Bentham
"God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages." - Jacques Deval, Afin de vivre bel et bien
"It is not enough to build classrooms in devastated countries or to publish scientific breakthroughs. Education, Social and Natural Science, Culture and Communication are the means to a far more ambitious goal: to build peace in the minds of men." - UNESCO
"There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship." - Mark Twain
"Only the educated are free." - Epictetus
"Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little need of reform in our prisons." - John Ruskin
"If you can read this, thank a teacher." - Anonymous teacher
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." - Dom Helder Camara
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government." - Thomas Jefferson
"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'" - Lyndon B. Johnson
"Journalism is literature in a hurry." - Matthew Arnold
"I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets." - Napoleon
Organizations
Quotes on Peace instead of War
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.... And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." - The original source of this quote is actually unknown although it is frequently attributed to William Shakespeare. Click here for more information.
"During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism." - Howard Thurman
"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies." - Moshe Dayan [1915-1981]
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - This quotation is represented to be from Hermann Goering, uttered during the post World War II Nuremburg war crimes trials set up by the victorious Allies. [verified at snopes.com]
"Of course peace is possible. Peace is already the practical, overriding existent reality of our lives; it describes our loves, our joys, our dreams and we rely on it for our future. Some would have us buy into war as the fundamental, inevitable perpetual condition of the world. This is a lie which we buy into at our greatest peril. We are called upon to respond with courage and with truth from the wellspring of our humanity." - Dennis Kucinich, 20061230sa
"The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war. The pulpit will - warily and cautiously - object... at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.' Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men...Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." - Published on Friday, September 20, 2002 in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Victory of the Loud Little Handful by Mark Twain, 1910, "The Mysterious Stranger"
"War is obsolete. We are not here to fight something or tear something down; We are here to be the example of what is possible. Any sane individual will tell you that violence is...not the way..." - Buckminster Fuller
"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" - Eleanor Roosevelt
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison
More quotes about peace instead of war
Stickers
Video, Film, Movies
Why We Fight. This documentary examines the causes of war and considers the factors that impede diplomatic and peaceful relations. [ Preview | Official Site | Watch it on GoogleVideo | Buy the DVD from Amazon ] (20060708sa1118) The Why We Fight DVD features interviews and observations by a "who’s who" of military and Washington insiders including Senator John McCain, Gore Vidal, and Dan Rather. Beginning with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s prescient 1961 speech warning of the rise of the "military industrial complex," Why We Fight moves far beyond the headlines of various American military operations to the deeper questions of why America seemingly is always at war. |
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| What are the forces – political, economic, and ideological – that drive us to clash against an ever-changing enemy? Just why does America fight? Unforgettable, powerful and at times disturbing, Why We Fight on DVD will challenge viewers long after the last fade-out. |
You can purchase the DVD by clicking the image above or watch this video now:
U.S. Military Draft
"The government is bringing out the old military draft machinery. Plans for a comprehensive test in 2009 are in the works. The Selective Service System says it's only a readiness exercise. President Bush said this week he wants to add more troops to the nearly 1.4 million now on active duty." Source: 20061221th-abc-news, World News Podcast.
War Commentary. This is a video commentary from a 4-year old about going into debt to wage war. This video is a response to the State of the Union (SOTU) address by President Bush on 23 January 2007.
Anti-War Video. Michael Franti sings a song about war which is set to images in this YouTube video.
"Society comprises two classes: those who have more food than appetite, and those who have more appetite than food." - Sébastien-Roch Nicholas de Chamfort, Maximes
"If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin." - Charles Darwin
"Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit." - Eli Khamarov, Lives of the Cognoscenti
"Poverty is the worst form of violence." - Mahatma Gandhi
"This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism." - Gloria Steinem
"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." - Mahatma Gandhi
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.”- Mahatma Gandhi
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